


demonstrative

by bibliocratic



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Asexual Character, First Pride, Gen, Martin doesn't have a crush yet but it's on the horizon, OG Archive Crew, S1 awkward Jon, ace!Martin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:07:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23802832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bibliocratic/pseuds/bibliocratic
Summary: Martin shyly grabs a multicolour pride flag from Tim's open and offering hands. Then, daring, almost surprising himself, he grabs the second flag he's been trying not to stare at.Sasha gives him an elbow nudge and a smile. Tim gives a whoop and a cheer.Or: Martin experiences his first Pride.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood & Sasha James & Tim Stoker
Comments: 34
Kudos: 334
Collections: Aspec Martin Blackwood Week





	demonstrative

**Author's Note:**

> soft OG Archive crew because I love them, ft. Jon being an awkward cat of a man. 
> 
> Written for Aspec Martin Week - prompt: first

Martin hangs close to Sasha near a stand selling gaudy accessories and spinning fans while Tim bounds off, shoving cheerfully through the mass of people, promising to search out somewhere that might have something approaching alcohol.

He's been gone a while now, and Martin's been anxiously adjusting his scratchy, over-loose bow-tie to try and distract himself, feeling sweaty and visible and uncomfortable. Sasha and Tim, in their early morning marshalling of their small group, had convinced him to paint his nails in some gauche glittery material that ripples rainbow when the light strikes it. He doesn't like the colour, and he's half ruined it anyway with his picking and fussing. Someone hasn't adjusted the volume controls on whatever system they've set up, and the next song blares out screaming-loud before someone lowers it, and Martin winces at how much it all it, every time someone gets hold of a garbling microphone and hollers something in the distance that gets muffled by a feedback whine.

He keeps checking his phone to make sure his mum hasn't called. He still isn't sure what excuse he'd try.

“What do you think?” Sasha angles her neck up to half-shout in Martin's ear. “For your first one?”

She's better dressed for the day, that's for sure, a flowing cotton summer dress with sewn-on streamers like some particularly striking maypole. She has a fake flower crown and it makes her look like a wispy fae creature. Her earrings dangle and chime, and Martin's glad he's not here on his own.

“Loud,” Martin complains back, and he thinks she laughs and nods in agreement before he's glancing around again at the masses of people. “Are you sure Tim's ok, I really think he should have been back by – ”

“Oy, over here!” comes the shout, and from the assembled gaggle, Tim emerges, looking delighted and smug and red-faced, his cheeks and the top of his nose having caught the sun. He adjusts his cap from where it's been jauntily knocked, and he's somehow gained the most tacky pair of rainbow sunglasses and at least five new roughly slapped on stickers since he vanished.

“Finally!” Sasha shouts back to him. “Took your time!”

“OK!” Tim says, clearly having not heard her or chosen not to. “ _Firstly,_ very important, on the alcohol front, ta-dah!” he gestures at his now bulging backpack. “Who's the man, huh, who delivers on his promises?”

“Like some sort of boozy Santa,” Sasha agrees, and unzips the bag to get a better look. “Someone's had a few on the job already!”

Tim makes a face. “Only one!”

“Tim, are you _thirteen,_ what you doing buying us this shite!” Sasha rootles around, pushing the Heineken cans out of the way and pulling half-out the three litre bottle of Frosty Jack's.

“They don't sell White Lightning any more!”

“For good reason!”

“C'mon, it'll be a reminder of old times! A misspent youth...”

“Not all of us hung about the parks getting wankered off cheap cider, _Timothy_.”

Martin's letting the rhythm of their conversation wash over him. Someone gave him a big beaming grin two minutes ago as they passed, an easy and appreciative look-over, and the heat of that interaction hasn't quite left his cheeks.

“And _secondly,_ if I can be allowed to get a word in edgeways – ”

“You may.”

“A kindness, m' lady.”

“Get on with it, serf.”

“ _Secondly,_ guys, look, they were giving them out for free!”

Tim presents his snaffled haul, his palms full of colours and patterns. A collection of cheaply-made paper flags, clearly printed and folded over and stuck onto cocktail sticks. There's a good number of them Martin doesn't recognise, but he doesn't want to feel ignorant by asking, so he keeps quiet.

“Sash, Sash, Sash,” Tim sing-songs at her.

“Tim, Tim, Tim,” she warbles back in a faux operatic voice.

“Got this one 'specially.”

“Charmer,” she smiles, but she allows Tim to stretch up to the height she's achieved with some seriously fuck-off heels, to plant the little flag behind her ear like a flower. She makes a show of preening, twirling it dramatically so the blue, white and pink of the stripes blur together for a moment. “It's acceptable.”

“You're too gracious,” Tim gives a mock bow. He's already stuck his blue, purple and pink flag into one of the belt loops of his jeans, the corner of it already bent slightly at the rough treatment.

He then turns to Martin.

“Let's spruce you up then Marto!”

Martin's in half a mind to refuse. It took a lot for him to even come here, and he's still not quite gotten rid of the tension that's strung across his shoulders. But he sets his jaw and knows he can always pocket them so no-one can see later.

He shyly grabs a multicolour pride flag from Tim's open hands. Then, daring, almost surprising himself, he grabs a second flag.

Sasha gives him an elbow nudge and a smile. Tim gives a whoop and a cheer and attempts to crush them both into a poorly aimed hug, before he shoves the rest of his haul into his trouser pockets.

Martin doesn't stick his own flags anywhere. He holds them fisted in his palm all day, over-aware of them, doing his best to protect them from the tides of people even though they eventually get a bit bashed and crumpled.

Tim's all for spending the night out on the town. But they spend most of the afternoon baking and hot, covered in glitter and day-drinking, finding a park along the way and casting themselves limblessly on the grass, so it's early yet when they start away from the street parties and thumping dance music. Tim ends the day with one cheek striped blue, one pink and his forehead purple, with some face-paint he's somehow gotten somewhere, waxing effusive about someone he danced to Taylor Swift with and didn't get her number: 'stunning, honestly, Martin, she was like one of those hot 1940's Hollywood people.'

“Didn't know you were into grandmas, Tim,” Sasha mumbles, half the words directed into Martin's ruin of hair. She's taken off her heels – which Tim is now holding, having tried and failed to get them to fit – and as the most sober one, Martin's carrying her on his back as she half dozes, sleepy and headachy from the music.

Martin hasn't checked his phone in hours. He's still got the little flags crushed in his grip. Tim keeps trying to hide a bear pride flag on Martin when he's not looking, and giving a giggling squawking protestation whenever he gets caught.

It's been a good day. Martin's head is buzzy on shit cider, and he's lost his bowtie, but he keeps looking at his little flags and smiling.

It's been a really good day, he thinks.

Restored from their dramatic hangovers, Monday comes. Martin arrives huffing and delayed from the Tube to see Tim's stuck his flag so it stands battered and proud over the lid of his laptop. Sasha's made her small desk teddy bear hold hers. And it's the memory of the day, the sun and the heat and the wild dizzying lack of expectations of it all, that gives him the courage to bring the flags he carefully preserved in on Tuesday, to put them jutting out of the mug on his desk that holds his stationery.

Honestly, he doesn't expect anyone to comment on them. It's not like anyone else comes down to their offices anyway.

So it's a surprise when Jon, striding past their desks, stops. Looks at the multicolour flag with its bent edging. Its sister flag, the stripes of grey, white and purple only a little sun-faded.

Tim has been lost to Archive Storage for hours now, Sasha hard cross-referencing over at another department. Martin always feels like he's failed some sort of test he didn't know he was taking, when he's in the room with Jon alone.

Martin stiffens but Jon just looks for moment.

“Where did you get them?” he asks briskly, gesturing.

“Oh!” Martin says, relieved that Jon's not stopped to tell him how poor his filing skills are again. “It was, erm, Pride? At the weekend. Tim, he got some for all of us.”

“Hm,” Jon nods. Still staring at Martin's flags. Especially the one Martin had hesitated over, held that bit tighter in his grip. He has an expression on his face, but Martin doesn't know what it is. He rarely knows how to read Jon.

“I think Tim might still have some!” Martin says, anxious to add something in this interaction he doesn't quite know how to navigate. “If you – you wanted any of your own?”

Jon pauses, gives Martin a sharp look as though annoyed he'd mentioned it, but then his face softens, and he looks at the flags again.

“I'll ask him,” he says, giving a short, hard nod. “No need to disrupt him when he's doing something productive.”

“Right,” Martin says weakly.

Jon gives him another nod, and then he vanishes back into his office, leaving Martin unsure of what's just happened.

(Later that week, Martin sees the flags struck into the soil of Jon's beleaguered desk cactus. The blue, pink and purple flag like Tim's. The grey, purple and white flag like Martin's. He doesn't comment, doesn't think Jon would like the attention. But he smile to see it nonetheless).


End file.
